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How to Make Facial Hair in Photoshop

How to Make Facial Hair in Photoshop

In today’s episode, we give you the gift of facial hair! Whether for fun or for professional Retouching, creating Hair can always come in handy.

Creating a Custom Brush: Step One

The first and possibly most important step is to make one single hair with the Brush Tool. This hair should be as perfect as possible and match the other Hairs on the Face, because it will become the custom Brush. If you want to create stubble, simply make the brush a little smaller to resemble a single spot of stubble.

A Hairier Face

When you are satisfied with your custom brush, it’s time to paint! All you have to do is paint on the Face where you want the hair to be.

Remember: hair is not always the same Color, so a good mixture of Lights and darks is important when making realistic facial hair. Hold ALT/OPT and sample multiple Colors as you go. Another secret is to paint with white to create some Highlights.

165 Comments

Hey Aaron, I am a long time subscriber to your youtube channel. I have been using Photoshop myself almost from the beginning. I learn so many new techniques from watching your videos. Thanks man, you are awesome! My daughter came to visit us this last Sunday for her 30th birthday. She took a selfie of the two of us on her cellphone. I have attached it. What I would like to know, if you would consider doing a video on this, is there anyway the quality of a cellphone picture can be improved. I really like the composition of the picture and how we turned out in it. I know that a few things in the picture can be fixed really easily – like her hair strands on my shirt or the speaker and wire on the wall. It isn’t very hard to do some exposure and color correction either. The picture is 72dpi with an overall size of 1200 x 1600 pixels. Would reducing the overall pixels to a fourth (300 x 400) and increasing the dpi to 300 help with beginning to get some clearer detail in the picture? Or is it never going to happen? Thanks for your help and drop me a line if you ever come to town (Las Vegas) and we’ll grab some coffee or something. Keep up the good work.

Not bad for a selfie! The quality probably has to do with the camera on the phone more than anything else–looks like it might have had an autofocus mistake. It’s usually hard to keep a phone still while you take a picture like that and the camera shake from your hand will cause softness. Photoshop has a method for correcting camera shake but it only works so well (Shake Reduction filter). Some sharpening would definitely help but reducing the dimensions and upping the DPI won’t do anything unless you intend to print. DPI is only a factor when printing. In digital form pixels are all that matter (unless I’m mistaken). Other than that some color correction could help, the picture is awfully cool from what looks like a flash. A warming adjustment layer (photo filter) or a curves adjustment could help with that. I know you were asking Aaron and not me but just thought I’d give my two cents. Hope that helps, cheers -Todd

Just a quick tip if somebody didn’t know: if you want to move something precisely but your snap option is on, just hold down the control(or command) key and as long as you’re holding it, it will automatically turn off the snapping 😉

Cheers Aaron & everyone involve in this amazing proyect!! I’ve learn so much and I’m so impress that you guys share all this good feelings and experience in Photoshop, way an incredible tool, but without any masters willing to freely and disinterested pass that wisdom it will be a sad world. Thanks a lot, best of luck and keep up!
from Chile

Awesome tut!! that was helpfull i got to make santaclaus beard and this helped alot with some parts, i had to do it by hand hair by hair actually, the mustache was made by hand, let me know what you think :), here’s a breakdown so you can see the process of layer, hope you like it and thank you again!

Hello Sir,
I am very happy to say, that I saw your facial hair brush and the most out there for us as beginners to Photoshop CC. Your explanation is very clear that could understand eassilly for everybody. I thank you very much and I like you very much and you are real, nothing hidden.
Thank You,
All the Best,
Lal

Hi Erda, look closer you previous pic, and this one, you will see that you facial hair on your face can’t be like you’ve painted it, look at the margin of face , you have precized margins with no hair….

bro thanks a lot for making a good tutorial.I watched your tutorial video but i dont do like as you.kindly let me know are you using photoshop seven or what?i’m not find hardness 79% only find that is pixel 3.but your custom beard shape and mine are very difference.i’m using windows.How to Phlearn custom facial hair brush include on my photoshop.please help me out.Here is my image.How to create this beard ?

hi , click the link ^^^ , it will open as a zip … then go to where photoshop is in your computer i.e program files86 find adobe photoshop >presets>brushes then drag the new brush into the brush presets in adobe and you will find it in your brushes folder when you launch the program 🙂